fabula.
March 31, 2009
one of the things i have always adored about new orleans, is that life here is never boring. i mean, really. something about the air or the water or something less concrete, tugs at each of our inner freaks and that is the persona we seem to all lead with when living here. and yes, perhaps that is a gross generalization, but i think it is the quirkyness in us all that knits together the beauty in life…and this town embraces all of these parts as the norm. that is an amazing thing.
as i’ve been walking through this time here, reviving friendships, reinvigorating connection, making new connections, stories begin to unravel before me like a reflection of hansel + gretl’s bread crumb trail, teasing me deeper and deeper in.
here are a few stories to share:
1. “ireland”
location: friend’s house
i’m standing at the back of the room having a complicated, yet cordial, conversation with a lawyer i actually met several years ago, who now tells me that he represented the new orleans housing authority recently during the controversy over whether or not to tear down existing public housing projects post-katrina (they did tear them down…) and as our conversation continues, we segue politely back to film (he’s been an active board member of the new orleans film festival for over 15 years) and he is encouraging me to submit my films to this year’s festival, as another woman joins us, a jury member of the festival, anxious to see more narrative/experimental pieces. curious. (yes yes, i will be submiting!)
and then i notice it. across the room, my wonderful friend alba, who’s birthday we are celebrating this night, is talking with a beautiful older woman and they are both looking over at me repeatedly and alba gives me that “we’re talking about you” look, that we have perfected with each other…
i excuse myself from the film festival gossip conversation (alas) and weave over to alba and said, mysterious woman…seems, i have been smiling at her all night and she is curious to know who i am…perhaps i am just a smiley person? we begin to talk and alba disappears. we happily bond immediately about both being tulane alums and she also tells me she’s married to the chair of the tulane theater department (rad!)…but that she had much more fun when she was younger and was “experimenting” with dating women…
somehow the topic of guinness comes up and she shakes her head at me upon learning that i have never been to ireland, thus never having had the opportunity to drink guinness there. she puts her hand on my forearm, looks me in the eyes and says, “then i will have to take you to ireland with me so we can drink guinness together.” oh my, i think she is flirting with me.
i, of course, flirt back 
we end up talking a lot now, sitting on the front porch, and i learn that she has a son who works in film for a post-production house in burbank…who she will be visiting at the end of may. i mention i might be in LA in may and she says we must then stay in touch so we can do dinner in LA. she’s on facebook, she says. “of course”, i say…and a the porch fills up with fabulously drunk and politely southern gay boys, our conversation ends there…
until she finds me later to say goodbye, and plants a big kiss, smack dab on my lips. she winks at me and leaves.
i am flattered.
i am intrigued.
i am intrigued that i am intrigued by a woman who is 65.
i haven’t friended her on facebook yet, but i ‘m sure i will
2. “alabama?”
location: private party at tipitina’s
he was just standing there, a few steps back from the other people i was talking to, staring. as our conversation lulled, i turned to him, extended my hand and offered my name. “hi, i’m stephanie” (as everyone here knows me as). he just looked at my hand, curious, and stared back. finally, after a few awkward moments when i am realizing that he is really way gone drunk and i may have just made a huge faux pas by engaging, he joined me and began to talk:
he asked me first, “are you a native?”, to which i replied, “no, not a native, but yes, i used to live here [in nola].”
he nods. then asks, “have you ever lived in alabama?” to which i replied, “no, but i have visited…”.
he’s drunk and my curiosity for where these questions are going begin to wane quickly as he punctures the bubble of personal space in leaning in just a little too close, as he continues the inquisition with, “are you a lesbian?”
i’m sorry, what? i respond, “because i haven’t lived in alabama, you are automatically asking me if i’m a lesbian?!”
i look over to a new friend i had met earlier in the evening and he just shakes his head…but doesn’t not intervene.
i like his lead…so i just shake me head and excuse myself as his wife approaches and tells him he needs to leave now, or else he’s walking home.
nice. the man can barely stand…
funny thing is, as i’m leaving with another friend a little bit later, we see him staggering alone down the sidewalk, away from the bar.
i think his name was joe.
3. “lollipop”
location: friend’s house
i am reconnecting with an old friend, a dali-inspired moustached gentleman with many a visible piercing…and we are laughing raucously at how our past and present intersect. he used to date a good friend of mine, and as her name comes up, i tell him that my most vivid memory of the time he dated her, was actually one of their play dates (he’s very kinky!! yay!)…no, i wasn’t there…but i was a part of the planning beforehand…and was there afterwards for the debrief with her. it was an age play scenario – my friend was playing a young girl being taken to the carnival and he was the sugar daddy…who buys her a giant rainbow colored lollipop (and i mean giant — it came in a big box) and then spanks her well with it. the lollipop came home beautifully cracked, chipped and well used
i tell him simply, i remember the lollipop. he grins proudly and nods, “oh, so do i.”
4. “ole miss”
location: friend’s house
“i’m actually from mississippi”, the sweet gay boy tells me. it is late into the night and still his button-down shirt remains unwrinkled under his sweater vest and neatly tucked into his unpleated, pressed khakis. we are sitting outside in the warm air and he tells me he went to “ole miss”. i get excited because to be honest, he is the first person i’ve ever met who went there and finally i get to admit that i visited the campus there in oxford once and walked all through campus, just because i was curious about this infamous institution of elite southern-ness. he is shocked! i ask him, “so, how were you able to queer it up?”, he grins and tells me that once he muddled through his freshman year, he realized that it was “one of the queerest places” ever!
really?!
we were interrupted by another friend before i could inquire further as to whether or not southern politeness is what was behind his response, or that perhaps ole miss is really one of the queerest places ever…and what the hell was i doing in san francisco when clearly, i could be living in mississippi and eating real grits on a regular basis as a big flaming queer.
roots.
March 29, 2009
i sit here. on a porch. sipping coffee, breathing deeply, listening intently…to the unspoken words woven through the ages in the elements around me…to the soft whisper of ideas taking shape within me. there is a lot and nothing going on at the same time.
i miss this place. this feeling. this sense of having been here for centuries, and yet, having nowhere to go to distract me. things are old. there are roots here that precede us, these buildings, this current iteration of life. it is these roots that compel me, that lure me in through a sweet siren’s song.
i am craving roots. feeling mine growing deeper and deeper and still, they haven’t yet found their roots. as i have been growing, expanding, becoming…i now realize that this is what i have been looking for all this time: i am seeking the soil i need that will allow my roots, the tendrils of my soul, to connect with something deeper, something older…something that holds me, grounds me, supports me through time.
this is what i feel standing on the ground in taiwan, where my ancestors breathed…this is what i feel here, in new orleans, here. this is what i want. this is what i need.
yet the question remains…do i need to live here or there in order to get what i want?
anyone? i could so use some guidance. please.
where is home?
March 29, 2009
i’ve been tossing around words and images in my head – ideas bubbling through my brain like a soda bottle that’s been shaken a few too many times…and i’m not sure i can keep the lid on any longer.
i am here. in new orleans and i am swelling once again with longing, contradiction and burning questions that always accompany this space for me — wanting to know what it is i really do feel here. what does it mean?
i am so at home here. i always have been. this place grounds me in a way that no other place has. being here is like coming home to safety of a loving mother’s hug. i need this. i need to find my footing again and i know that i can find it here. the first time i came here, 15 years ago, i stayed for 2 years…and then again for another 6 months. i found my footing then in a deeply profound way…i am hoping this place will again spin her magic for me and (re)connect my feet with the ancient roots that fed me then.
the first time i came back after katrina, was a year after the storm…and i was not prepared for the devastation that was still so real, so palpable in the physical and psychic spaces of the this town. it broke me to my core…and i knew it would be a long while until i returned.
18 months later, i am back. this time to celebrate a friend’s 40th…and i enter the space with more caution, with less expectation….and all the while, entirely full of hope.
my heart pounds as it hears the sounds of the streets and breathes in the scents that construct this world…it expands to its fullness with a longing to be back here. to throw down my roots here once again. to be able to say definitively, that yes, this is my home.
yet what does that mean? is it nostalgia that tickles my nose and clouds my vision through an idealized lens?
something always keeps me from coming back and staying here…i thought i had reached a space of clarity in knowing that san francisco was my home, the place i am called to be right now – and yet. being here. breathing this air. standing on this ground…i am once again flirting at the cusp of knowing that this is where i belong.
or is it?
what is home?
i write this as a friend’s cat climbs all over me, across my keyboard – demanding attention in the same ways that my little blue does at my home – my other home — the one where i live day to day…and it makes me wonder even more, what is it that makes up a home…better yet, how does a home get built?
i am tired. worn out. for so many many reasons, so i must leave the question here – splayed open on the table, wanting so much to be dissected and understood…yet this body must first sleep…this is the question i have come here with…the question that teases me each moment i am here…and i will coerce this space, this blog, to keep peeling back the layers of this question as the days progress.
i am here for 5 days. i hope this will be ample time to find my footing. to (re)discover me. to understand my home. to (re)claim the tools i need to (re)build my home.
walking the plank.
March 27, 2009
there’s a fine line that links up the extremes…a line that forms a circle, making me wonder where one ends and the other begins.
i am experiencing that blur today as i stand in the storm of my emotions. things are new. evolving. uncharted these days, as i step off the plank and plunge into the sparkling blue depths below.
i walked the plank willingly. i refused the blindfold, cut free my restraints…and yet, as my feet release their grip on the sanded wood, i hear the whimper of a little child inside me, begging to be locked up once more, to feel safe again, in the secure depths of the ship’s hull.
and yet, i am already soaring. catching the wind, taking flight. i greet the birds who i only used to know by the whisper of their wings as they flew by…i nod in recognition to the creatures below whose songs have lulled me to sleep for years.
i must remember the lessons i have learned. the many ways i now know of how to say “yes” to all of who i am…respecting my process, my truth, my here and now.
i close my eyes as i hear the wisdom of the wind in my ears, my heart aglow with the words that it shares, the promises they hold. i don’t know how long i will be held by the currents of air or when my feet will break the surface of the water below.
what i do know, is that in this leap, i have made a choice: to patiently, and lovingly, navigate the journey between joy and terror, over and over again.
how’s your love life?
March 23, 2009
it’s complicated.
i’ve been letting the sound of those words stumble through the labyrinth of meaning that my brain projects upon it all day today…trying to build new context for a shifted experience. the first time i came across those words, in a formal way, was years ago in that more nascent world of social networking, friendster. my ex and i were breaking up and it was the nice way to publicly transition, it seemed, from “in a relationship” to “single”. everyone seemed to know what it meant though…code words for “we’re stumbling towards a break”.
as the sphere of the social network matures, evolves and streamlines into facebook, my friends and i are learning to resign ourselves to the reality that we share this knowledge of shifting definitions of interpersonal relationships more frequently online, than in person. Remember the days when we would just ask “so, how is your love life?”. thing is, we don’t have to ask anymore, as everyone knows our business…even if it was unintended. once a friend changes their relationship status, the notification zooms across the news wires immediately…notifying our well populated ether-based networks in a way that is both painful and pleasurable, like tearing off a band-aid in one full swoop.
really, though, what does it mean to say that one is “single”, or “in a relationship” or “married”? does that really tell you anything about who they are or how they are truly relating with other people? i have blogged on this before – a vent, really, of our collective need to place definitions onto others, and ourselves, based on intimate relationships, so we can safely put people into boxes for social categorization. i argue though, that once we start looking deeper, few of our relationships would actually fit those boxes.
in managing my facebook page, i chose quite intentionally to exclude “single” or any other relationships status from my profile. as much as i hated being asked about my “love life” (because, “love” in my life is complicated and something i express in a variety of ways, and really, sex and love aren’t always the same…but i digress…), i now almost crave it — wanting the opportunity to give words to the complexity of my relationships, encounters, experiences, and evolving intimacies. i want to define what the landscape of my “love life” is in a way that moves far beyond the simplicity of a single word or phrase.
then today, i saw it anew. “it’s complicated”. a relationship status on someone else’s profile that once again involves me, yet not because the person who posted it is on the verge of breaking things off with me but because it is simply that, “complicated”. as she and i begin to weave together our time, our interests, our selves in the context of dating…we get to decide what the full landscape looks like, feels like and most importantly, how it is defined. this is the type of relationship i want. one that isn’t bound by moral expectations of monogamy or a myriad other social norms…but one that is fluid, experimental and open.
meaning transforms as context evolves.
